History of the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel

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From its opening day to the present day, the tunnel has gone through many changes.

Tunnel Pre-construction

Debates regarding the building of a tunnel between the United States and Canada
began as early as the late 1860s. Some
people felt that a bridge was the more practical approach, as it was
believed that a bridge could be constructed faster and would cost less. However,
ships with very high masts navigated the Detroit River
and critics believed it would be difficult to build a bridge high
enough.

Before there was a tunnel or a bridge connecting the U.S. with Canada, private
boats and ferries carried people and goods across the river. But winter ice was a
serious obstacle and some other way seemed necessary.

Construction of a railway tunnel connecting Windsor and Detroit began in 1871.
The project was abandoned when a pocket of sulphur gas
claimed
the lives of two workers and sickened many others. A second attempt was made
between Grosse Isle, Michigan and
Amherstburg, Ontario, seven years later. This project was also abandoned when limestone formations made
excavation costs too high.

An American man named Luther Beecher saw the great potential in building a railway
tunnel. He formed a
company to devise a tunneling plan. The tunneling plan was known as "Uncle Luther's Mole".
Nearly forty years after the first disastrous attempt, the
Michigan Central Railway Tunnel was available for the shipping of both
people and goods across the U.S./Canada border.

Even with a new railway tunnel, supporters of the bridge and automobile
tunnel concepts remained devoted to their causes. With the automobile industry constantly
expanding, both projects found favour.

Windsor Mayor Edward Blake Winter approached Detroit politicians with the idea
of building the vehicle tunnel as a World War I memorial and
international connection. After
Detroit Mayor James Couzens approved the idea, Winter asked the Canadian
government to construct the tunnel. However
the project was discouraged, as the government was suffering financially
after the war.

Despite the lack of funding and a popular fear that anyone using the tunnel
would die of carbon monoxide poisoning, discussion continued through the
1920s. Determined tunnel supporters would not accept defeat, although they did accept that
private funding would be needed.

Fred
Martin became vice president of the company in charge of "The Detroit
River Subway Project" in the mid 1920s. He became one of the biggest promoters of the project and was
responsible for obtaining the funding needed to begin the project.

In 1926, Parsons,
Klapp, Brinkerhoff and Douglas, a prestigious
architectural firm in New York predicted that the tunnel would not only
be feasible but also profitable. A
group of Detroit bankers then made an agreement to fund the project, as
long as the firm would design the tunnel and guarantee its construction
costs.

An agreement was made between the two cities and the Detroit Canada Tunnel
Corporation (DCTC), in which ownership of the tunnel would be
transferred to the cities of Detroit and Windsor after 60 years of
operation. This condition
was made in exchange for the cities allowing construction beneath public
rights-of-way.

Finally, though not without its
doubters,
construction of the Detroit/ Windsor Tunnel began in the summer of 1928.